Hiking as methodology: Land, bodies, and queer ecological relations

Abstract This article theorizes hiking as methodology based on 1,500 miles of ethnographic walking on the Pacific Crest Trail. Contributing to a growing body of literature on walking ethnography, and to a broader more‐than‐human turn in anthropological methodologies, this research works to queer walking as method. Incorporating feminist, queer, and Indigenous environmental theory, hiking as a queer methodology means moving in ways that are deeply relational, non‐linear, and anticolonial. Hiking as methodology is presented through four intertwining paths of thought. First, while walking ethnographers have focused on the importance of place in research, long‐distance hikers understand ecologies in uniquely general and abstract ways, often without specificity of place. This generality is a novel method for walking research. Second, against and in addition to generality, non‐normative hiking includes understanding Indigenous histories and ongoing realities of place. Engaging with deep histories and Land Back teaches hikers that land is never apolitical. Third, more‐than‐human ecological actors exert agency within walking ethnography. I focus specifically on the agency of mountains, water, stars, and fire. Finally, long‐distance hikers position themselves in non‐normative ways in relation to each other, ecological actors, space, and time. Queer spatiality on‐trail demonstrates relationality integral to queer ecologies.